As is obvious to everyone else who has ever commented on our debates, I was interested in impact prevention before we ever started debating. Your statements to the contrary are more evidence of your mental state. The only change in my opinion is that I now believe we need to go beyond the spaceguard proposals with a space based system or a large ground scope to find impactors smaller than 300m. This change in mindset was perhaps delayed by your false claims that no small impactors were being detected. It lead me to dismiss you originally as a total crank rather than take your comments seriously.

However in seeking data to refute your false statements, I discovered that the rate of small impactor discovery is a small fraction compared to the estimated number. While our current system could find ocean wide tsunami/ continent killers (300-1000m) over a time frame far shorter than their expected impact interval, the same could not be said for tunguska class events. A ground based scope to detect 90% of 300 m objects in ten years could survey most 100m objects over several decades. A space based system could do it faster.

The fact that a lot of smaller impactors would have been detected by the original spaceguard proposals as mentioned in many documentaries and reports by Morrison, Chapman and other well known impact experts gives a false sense of security in my view. It is important to view these discoveries as a percentage of the total population. That is the one and only contribution your commentary has helped make to my understanding of the impact threat. It is too bad you can not state the issue accurately instead of your usual we can't detect small impactors with existing systems BS. That type of exaggeration may be responsible for the attitude of the controversial Australian science minister.

It should also be noted be fair to Morrison, Chapman, & Co that their reports did accurately show how slow the rate of discovery would be for smaller impactors. You just had to go deep into the reports to find that information rather than rely on summaries and their documentary comments.

In addition to ignoring the mutual benefit aspect of Mars exploration technology and impact prevention, you also continue to ignore or fail to understand comments on political will not Mars funding being the primary obstacle to funding better detection systems. Australia's science minister dismissed the issue itself. He did not claim he would prefer to spend the money on Mars missions.

The conflict between Mars exploration and impact prevention is a figment of your imagination.

Regards,
Mark